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Review Summary

1933 Nobel Prize winner Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is the subject of this Russian biopic, originally screened at the 2000 Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Andrey Smirnov portrays the writer, whose unabashedly bohemian lifestyle caused somewhat of an uproar in Europe and Russia in the years leading up to World War II. When the film opens, Bunin is married to the browbeaten Vera, and feels the need to take up a live-in lover -- the beguiling poetess Galia. The romantic triangle becomes more of a trapezoid when Lionya, a fan of the writer, turns up on his doorstep and eventually moves in with the motley crew. When Galia leaves Ivan for a nightclub singer, however, their lives appear to be changing for the worse -- an emotional state exacerbated by the escalation of political conflict in Europe. The film's script was written by Smirnov's daughter, Dunya Smirnova. ~ Michael Hastings, Rovi